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Trump Slams Obama for Not Stopping Russia From Meddling With Election

Trump also claimed former Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson “is latest top intelligence official to state there was no grand scheme between Trump & Russia”. USA officials have blamed Russian-aligned hackers for other state election database breaches, allegations Moscow has repeatedly denied.Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson returned to Caption Hill as a private citizen to testify about Russian intrusion into US voting systems.”As of right now, we have evidence that election-related systems in 21 states were targeted”, Manfra told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a separate hearing on Wednesday. He toyed then with the idea of declaring election systems as critical infrastructure but says he met pushback from secretaries of state and other state election officials.Former homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson.He noted that give the decentralization of the system, the audits and testing by local election officials, the media attention and the scrutiny of anything that looks amiss, it would be very hard to do something without it being detected. Dianne Feinstein of California, said it was an introductory meeting aimed at working to ensure the congressional investigations don’t conflict with the one led by Mueller.The US continues to state that none of the attacks directly election vote counts. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said during the press conference that he hasn’t spoken to the president about the Russian investigation.”Based on everything I know, that is correct”, Johnson told Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, “I know of no evidence that, through cyber-intrusions, votes were altered or suppressed in some way”.Johnson says a lot of internal discussion and consideration preceded an October statement about the hacking from his department and the director of national intelligence.DNC officials said it did not hear from DHS until months after the hack had been made public and after the Federal Bureau of Investigation had worked to close the intrusion, and that the DNC provided the DHS a detailed report on the incident.He thinks Congress will have better luck encouraging cybersecurity best practices in state and local governments that procure and operate election systems through grants and other incentives.Noting that the hacking happened “at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself”, Mr. Johnson said he was moved to try to shield the nation’s election system by the “unprecedented” nature of Russian interference in the last election.Johnson testified that he worries most about the vulnerability of state voter-registration databases to intrusions, including the manipulation of voter-registration data. Systems were breached in a smaller number of states, she said, but did not give a specific figure. “He should have already acted on that so we can get onto this other business, so the cost of what Russian Federation did and the president’s obstruction of these investigations is everyday Americans’ concerns”.Johnson, who said he testified voluntarily, also revealed the Democratic National Committee rejected an offer of help from his department after internal emails were hacked and released on the eve of the party’s presidential nominating convention.Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told a congressional panel on Wednesday that there was a delay between the time the Federal Bureau of Investigation first made contact with the Democratic National Committee about Russian Federation hacking its servers and the time he was notified at the Department of Homeland Security. The move was aimed at providing more federal cybersecurity assistance to state and local governments.But election organization officials criticized the decision as an overreach that could make elections less transparent.